I wish I had my own Death Star, but all the vision quests in the world won’t make it any easier for me to blow up Alderaan.
I’m forced to conclude it’s a good thing I don’t wish there was a God.
Because I can’t see how you’d have any other choice. Like I said, I wish I had perfect health. Why do I stop at just wishing?
1a Theist: Do you think most atheists wish there were a [n all powerfull and Good] God?
I have no way of knowing. There are atheists & there are anti-theists who call themselves atheists. I think most of the latter are afraid there is a God.
2a Theist: What are your feelings about people who are convinced they won’t burn in hell because there is no such place? (Assume their belief is as strong as your belief that there is such a place)
Keeping in mind that I tend to believe in temporal “Hell” which results in either reconciliation or final destruction, I do feel sorry for the unpleasant surprise they’ll have but hope for their final reconciliation, and depending on the vindictiveness
of the anti-theist, a little schaudefreud(sp?) at their embarrassment in facing God.
3a Theist: What is your imagination of what heaven is like? How does heaven deal with the human tendency to normalize all forms of pleasure? (how does heaven deal with the phenomenon whereby the novelty of all good things wear off. If heaven is eternal)
I actually do believe in material “immortality”, that while delighting in perpetual adoration of God/Jesus/HolySpirit, we will also be exploring and cultivating the entire Universe for habitation. We will have the intellect to study the most intricate details of sub-atomic particles and the farthest reaches of the Cosmos, and still the most inexhaustible subjects for study will be the wonderfulness of God and the depths of the human soul.
4a Theist: Give me your opinion of the Phelps family.
They have more Hell to fear than any good-natured atheist.
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Hey, if you’re in a position to create a God, then, yeah, wishing without going further is incomplete. Otherwise, it’s thoroughly normal to wish things were one way while believing they actually are another, as everyone has pointed out; it’s not as if we have any say in the matter, we’re just expressing both our preferences and our understanding of the way things actually are, and the two happen to be different.
(On another note, after reading this thread, I wish I’d given a more forceful description in my response to number 3 of just how loopy Buddhism and reincarnation seem to me)
I used to think I was an atheist when I was a teenager. Then I almost died and realized I still believed in God, so I’m going to answer both sets of questions. I’m a non-denominational protestant.
1a Theist: Yes. I think most atheists actually believe in God and just hide from that fact, the way I did. Why would they do this? Because they either think it’s a cool trend, or they are trying to be “scientific”. It’s almost like teenage rebellion and angst, except most are adults, that’s my theory.
1b Atheist: No
2a Theist: I agree with them. There is no hell.
2b Atheist: There is no soul. There is no “feeling” to death. Your brain stops functioning and that’s it.
3a Theist: I have no idea what heaven will be like. I have often wondered how heaven could not get boring after a while. An eternity always seemed like a long time to me and frightened me when I was a child. Nowadays I just trust the Lord to provide entertainment when I get there.
3b Atheist: Just as wrong as any other religion. There is no life after death. The molecules that make up a human body may end up in other creatures. That is the only “life” after death.
4a Theist: Assholes, but all assholes are entitled to their opinion.
4b Atheist: I held Darwin in as high regard as Newton, and I still do.
1a Theist: Do you think most atheists wish there were a [n all powerfull and Good] God?
I have no idea. I assume they want evidence of a God rather than just accepting on faith that such a being or force exists.
1b Atheist: Do you wish so?
2a Theist: What are your feelings about people who are convinced they won’t burn in hell because there is no such place? (Assume their belief is as strong as your belief that there is such a place)
**I think Hell is not a physical domain somewhere but it’s something that people create here on Earth for others–i.e. slavery, holocaust, genocide, torture, etc. “Hell is other people,” as the old saying goes. I don’t think God sentences anyone to eternal pain. **
2b Atheist: What, in your opinion, happens to that thing we call a ‘soul’ after our body dies? If anything? How can you comprehend how it might ‘feel’ to die?
3a Theist: What is your imagination of what heaven is like? How does heaven deal with the human tendency to normalize all forms of pleasure? (how does heaven deal with the phenomenon whereby the novelty of all good things wear of f. If heaven is eternal)
**I’m not convinced that there is a heavenly realm or domain either; see above. “The Kingdom of God is within you” seems quite clear; you can do what Jesus asked people to do and make things better if you want to, but he was talking, apparently, about doing it while you’re here and now and very much alive. **
3b Atheist: What do you think of far-eastern religions such as Buddhism which (as far as my knowledge takes me) don’t believe in a God, but do believe in something after death, and also believe of an alternative to this existence.
4a Theist: Give me your opinion of the Phelps family.
Utterly disgusting and they do not follow any of Jesus’s teachings.
4b Atheist: Give me your opinions of Darwin and Dawkins.
Feel free to add your own poll questions for subsequent posters to answer.
Semi-rhetorical question: How could so many people take Jesus’s simple truths and love and kindnesses and screw them up so badly over the centuries?
He asked people to love, forgive, give to and care for others. He did not say to hold up nasty picket signs at a gay person’s funeral, or to argue with scientists about the age of the earth, or to torment and kill people who don’t share your particular belief.
I have to take issue, not with you, but with this answer.
I doubt most people who call themselves atheists are doing so because it’s fashionable. Atheism is frowned upon by most people, especially in America. I also happen to think that most atheists are like me: True atheists. They probably once believed and there’s a tiny part of them that thinks ‘maybe there is a God’ but their experience and logic screams to them that God is a concept created by the human mind and nothing more than that, and that tiny bit of them is the same tiny bit that might also tell them ‘maybe, just maybe I have within me magical powers such as telepathy and the ability to fly and move through solid objects’
Let’s not do this in a poll, please.
OK. Sorry.
1b Atheist: Do you wish so? No, I prefer to observe/experience what takes place around me and respond/react how I see fit, or not.
2b Atheist: What, in your opinion, happens to that thing we call a ‘soul’ after our body dies? If anything? How can you comprehend how it might ‘feel’ to die? I was clinically dead (heart stopped) after an accident for some time if I had never been revived I would have never known. I feel comfortable believeing that one day I will simply cease to exist.
3b Atheist: What do you think of far-eastern religions such as Buddhism which (as far as my knowledge takes me) don’t believe in a God, but do believe in something after death, and also believe of an alternative to this existence. People will believe anything and that is their choice. I do not believe in an alternative to this existance (see 2b).
4b Atheist: Give me your opinions of Darwin and Dawkins. Don’t know who Dawkins is…Darwin made a reasonable explaination of what he observed.
1b Atheist: Do you wish so?
Nah. I’m glad there isn’t, since there might be some hope in understanding nature then. An all-powerful God just seems so… complicated
2b Atheist: What, in your opinion, happens to that thing we call a ‘soul’ after our body dies? If anything? How can you comprehend how it might ‘feel’ to die?
I feel reasonably sure that it’s a lot like fainting and/or getting knocked out. Have you ever stood up too quickly and gotten that “uh-oh” light-headed feeling? Senses start to fade, vision gets white and tunnel-y, hearing is the last thing to go. Fortunately, I’m alive, so my heart eventually restores the blood to my brain and I come back. If I had blood loss or heart failure, I imagine it would be just like that, ending with being “knocked out” for good – complete nothing. (I was knocked out just once, for a half-second at most, from a head-to-head collision while engaged in sport. Complete nothingness for that time. Quite different from the feeling of being asleep. {When I wake up, I don’t feel like I didn’t exist all night. I feel like I was asleep all night, and that time passed and everything.})
3b Atheist: What do you think of far-eastern religions such as Buddhism which (as far as my knowledge takes me) don’t believe in a God, but do believe in something after death, and also believe of an alternative to this existence.
Good stories. There seems (to me) to be a strong desire to have such stories around. Every culture has one (or more).
4b Atheist: Give me your opinions of Darwin and Dawkins.
Clever guys.
Atheist: How do you respect a loved-one when he or she dies?
We are all hard-wired with emotion. I’d do right by the deceased! (Perhaps fundamentally because it makes me feel better, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near that conscious. A respect/awe for life is a natural thing to expect from evolution.)
Hell no.
Unanswerable as there is no such thing as a soul. There can be no feeling where there is no life.
AFAIK Buddhism believes in no afterlife as such, just reincarnation. But in any case it is just as plainly a human-constructed mental defense against the permanency of death as the concepts of heaven and hell.
Darwin was a good and gentle man who was led - against his will and original beliefs - by the facts and the scientific method to the undeniable conclusion that neither mankind or the natural world required a supernatural explanation. Dawkins is one of the great biologists, but has little idea of how to go about actually convincing his philosophical opponents to his point of view (a flaw shared by almost the entire human race BTW). The God Delusion relied far too much on the reader agreeing with and understanding his PoV from the start to have the effect he clearly desired (and which would have been good for humanity had he succeeded).
1: Do you wish [there were an all powerfull and Good God]?
No
2 : What, in your opinion, happens to that thing we call a ‘soul’ after our body dies? If anything? How can you comprehend how it might ‘feel’ to die?
No such thing, so nothing to happen to. Yes, I can comprehend death.
3: What do you think of far-eastern religions such as Buddhism which (as far as my knowledge takes me) don’t believe in a God, but do believe in something after death, and also believe of an alternative to this existence.
I’ve been Buddhist - lots of neat ideas, but still too dependent on its Vedic origins to be truly free of baggage. And no, Buddha refused to directly address what happens after death or what alternatives are. The idea of reincarnation is of course central to Buddhism, and I don’t believe in it, which is why I’m not Buddhist anymore.
4: Give me your opinions of Darwin and Dawkins.
Both make for interesting reading. Darwin was unquestionable, totally right about evolution, and Dawkins is mostly right, although he relies on memetics more than I’d like.
Theist
Do you think most atheists wish there were a [n all powerfull and Good] God?
Doubt it. Some may be frustrated by people saying they have experienced God and think that if only they themselves had that sort of experience, they’d be able to believe. Perhaps. Maybe.
What are your feelings about people who are convinced they won’t burn in hell because there is no such place? (Assume their belief is as strong as your belief that there is such a place)
I think the Biblical concept of Hell was a metaphor given to people who couldn’t understand more complex concepts. That said, I doubt there’s many people destined to suffer any punishment per se. It has long been my belief that only people who can fully comprehend the effects of their actions on another can sin; and I mean ‘comprehend’ in terms of living the actual experience. It is evident to me that humans are lacking in understanding and very often incapable of thinking clearly and that they act from muddled thinking (your Phelps being an example of one such creature). I don’t believe anyone will be punished for being frail and flawed.
I also don’t believe I could be better than the all-loving, so if I can find it in my miserable little heart to forgive people who do great wrong, I expect the Divine can do much better 
Some of the folks who claim to have gone to the other side while clinically dead report that the punishment included suffering the pain they caused others. That seems appropriate as a path to understanding.
What is your imagination of what heaven is like? How does heaven deal with the human tendency to normalize all forms of pleasure? (how does heaven deal with the phenomenon whereby the novelty of all good things wear of f. If heaven is eternal)
I don’t know what it’s like. I think I’ve had rare glimpses of how it feels. I have a limited, human, intellect that can only grasp the most minute scrap of understanding at a non-thought level. As for 'all good things wear off - that’s a human construct for limited humans. We’ll no longer be constrained that way.
Give me your opinion of the Phelps family.
Why them of all people? Do you honestly think you’ll find anyone who admires them? They are seriously misguided.
Nope, no wishes either way. Well, I hope that there is no God who wants me to go to hell, but that’s more because I’d rather not suffer for eternity.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a soul. There is a mind, the intelligence of a person, but I believe that the continuity of that mind is directly tied with the continuity of the brain, so when the brain is no longer working, the mind has died. I can comprehend how it might feel to die (I assume you don’t mean how my body feels but how my soul/mind feels) in the same way I can comprehend what it must feel like to go insane or get Alzheimer’s, which is to say not very well, but drug experiences help.
I think that there are many useful aspects of religion, such as prayer/meditation, and that it doesn’t take scientific knowledge to hit on good knowledge about the body. However, I don’t believe in anything after death for my consciousness/mind.
Well, they’re two very different people. Darwin was a great scientist, but no prophet. He’s just another scientist who greatly helped to develop our understanding of biology and how it works over long periods of time. Awesome for him, thanks Darwin!
As to Dawkins, I like that he has the balls to tell it as he sees it, but I think he’s a bit evangelical, even if logically his arguments hold water when he says that he is not a fundamentalist. His self gene theory is interesting, but as far as I know not fully accepted in the scientific community, and his atheism can get a bit annoying sometimes. Personally, I find myself more of an agnostic than atheist. For me, I’ve never seen evidence of a god, so I’m happy not believing in one until I see such evidence. As of now, I don’t believe for sure that there is not one either, I just find it highly unlikely. Same goes for the above answers: those are what I find most likely from given evidence, not what I absolutely believe and have faith in.
OK, I wanted to answer that without reading everyone else’s answers, now I’ll go through and see if there are other questions that have been posted.
- Do I wish there was a powerful and good God?
Yes, in a way. I would like there to be life after death, I would like to have access to all knowledge and reunite with loved ones. I would like to think there is a supernatural world. I simply see no evidence for it.
On the flip side, I don’t think most people who claim to follow a good God really do. They follow a flawed and ultimately rather human God. A truly good God, in my estimation, can’t be jealous, wrathful, or vengeful. Most capital-G monotheistic Gods seem to be.
- What, in your opinion, happens to that thing we call a ‘soul’ after our body dies? If anything? How can you comprehend how it might ‘feel’ to die?
I do not believe in a soul, having no evidence for it. Our consciousness ends as the brain dies. I’m sure this can happen a number of different ways - hallucinating the light at the end of the tunnel is one way this seems to happen.
- What do you think of far-eastern religions such as Buddhism which (as far as my knowledge takes me) don’t believe in a God, but do believe in something after death, and also believe of an alternative to this existence.
I think it’s still basically a religion. The problem is lack of real evidence. Our bodies seem capable of religious experiences and inspiration - but in the end this isn’t real evidence. I think it comes down to wishful thinking, hope, imagination, and a bit of self-delusion. Not that it’s entirely a bad thing, but, ultimately, we like to fool ourselves.
- Give me your opinions of Darwin and Dawkins.
I’m not that studied on either of them. They’re scientists and I think science as a whole has a working system to test our judgements about the way the world works, but individual scientists can and often are wrong. I think there’s a lot of evidence for evolution but there are unanswered questions, of course. Over time, as we gather more data and refine theories, I believe that the process of science as a whole brings us closer to “truth”.
Theist here.
1a. I’m sure some do, don’t know about most.
2a. I don’t think people will burn in hell forever for anything they do or don’t believe, either. I don’t think there’s an eternal hell, and I believe the entrance criteria for what hell there is have more to do with what you do than what you believe.
3a. I think it’s something beyond our human comprehension. I think it’s something more like union with God than it is like the stereotypical idea of heaven.
4a. Fred Phelps is evil and a jackass. I feel sorry for his kids, though.
1b Atheist: It certainly would stop alot of the bloodshed we have going on in this world if there was something nice and definable like that.
2b Atheist: The whole concept of a sole is pretty theist, so this is a silly question. It’s easy to comprehend how it might feel to die. I go unconscious every night.
3b Atheist: From afar, they seem to believe only slightly less in the magical pixie dust than my local xtians.
4b Atheist: The thiests get to give an opinion on the moonbats, and we get Darwin? I don’t see this as an equal question at all. I don’t know much about Dawkins. Part of my atheism is the fact that I am so comfortable with my ‘faith’ that I don’t really give a shit about what other athiests are saying. The athiests that seem to be turning it into some sort of religion interest me just about as much as the theists.